BANATOON: Treasure hunt!

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Review

The gameplay loop is time consuming and repetitive, low quality sound effects

Are you up for a challenge? Banatoon: Treasure Hunt for Android is a cute and funny choice-driven game that requires you to make decisions that will either lead to treasure or a quick exit from the game. Unfortunately, there are some games you just don’t get, and this one didn’t resonate with me the way I thought it was going to originally. But that’s okay, I’m probably not the targeted demographic.

There isn’t really any “gameplay” in Banatoon. Instead, what you’ll do is watch short scenes of animation play out based on choices you made. For instance, when you first begin the game a tree will fall in your path. You can choose to dig or use a woodpecker to peck the tree away. In this case, both choices lead to further progress in the game, but it doesn’t always play out that way. Sometimes you’ll run into dangerous wildlife and if you pick the wrong choice then you have to start over.

Starting over is the game’s biggest fault. Since there isn’t any way to really tell how a scenario is going to play out ahead of time, you’re left with trial and error to get through the game. Typically that would be fine. The fun of the game is watching what happens. However, starting all over again and being forced to rewatch every decision over and over again isn’t fun, and the further you get in the game, the worse it becomes because there are so many choices you’ll have to rewatch. Eventually, it just isn’t worth the time it takes.

Banatoon: Treasure Hunt! suffers at its own expense. The thing that would make the game fun and engaging is ultimately what makes it fun and really repetitive. If there was a way to replay each scenario by skipping them, that would be a huge favor to players.